A Ravel of Waters

I recalled Tideman's guess that the Soviet Navy might have suspected that Jetwind was not merely a new type of sailing ship but a vessel of strategic significance.

Grohman's next words bore it out. He said in a quiet, sinister voice, 'This ship has a secret, and we mean to find it out.'

I went cold inside. Had Jetwind's picture after leaving Montevideo – as we had speculated – indeed failed to register on a Red spy satellite sensor because of her polyionosoprene-coated sails and in consequence precipitated the order to Grohman to kill Mortensen and take the ship to safety in the Falklands pending the Group Condor attack? The jigsaw seemed to fit.

What Grohman added made me certain. It also frightened me.

'The woman knows what it is,' he said. 'At Kyyiv, we will extract it.' Kay went white. I'm only a sail-maker!' she exclaimed.

'Only a sail-maker!' he mocked. 'We shall see! There are ways of extracting the unextractable, senorita!' 'There is nothing to know, Grohman!' I snapped.

His face suffused with rage. ' You tell me that! You! Listen – you interfere in everything! You nearly caused the entire attack plan to abort! My orders were to wait in Port Stanley in Jetwind until the main body of Group Condor arrived for me to seize the place. Just to make sure, my country sent the Almirante Storni…'

I laughed. He swung on me so violently I thought he was about to use the UZI.

'Laugh-while you have the time!' he snarled. 'Soon you will regret what you did to the Almirante Storni!’

Tideman stepped in to try and defuse the tension. He played on Grohman's illusions of grandeur.

'The Soviet Navy's oceanographic ships have combed the Indian Ocean for years,' he said. 'Likewise, they must have charted every seamount and shoal in the Southern Ocean, from what you say.'

It seemed, as if Tideman had pressed the right button. Grohman calmed down. 'Have you asked yourself why?' he asked rhetorically.

'Obvious. Safe routes for nuclear subs,' replied Tideman.

'As you say, the obvious deduction,' Grohman retorted with an air of contempt. 'It is what we wanted the West to think.' 'What else?' I interjected.

He asked obliquely, 'Have you ever heard of jellified fuel?' He did not wait for us to venture an answer. 'The Soviet Fleet uses it. It is a type of fuel ideally suited to submarines. It minimizes vapour pressure and is easily relinquished. It does away with all need for the elaborate array of fleet replenishment tenders and refuelling points in mid-ocean which are subjected to monitoring by spy satellites and spy planes. Stored underwater in a base which is secure, shallow and cold, jellified fuel gives the submarine – the Red submarine, that is to say – a range without limit.' 'Molot!' I exclaimed.

'Yes, Molot.' he said triumphantly. 'Supply ships dump large plastic containers of jellified fuel which are cached away at Molot safe from detection beneath the surface. The shoals of this seamount could not be bettered for our purpose. Our submarines are guided to the dumps by means of underwater electronic markers. Once the fuel is scooped up by a submarine, the process of reliquification is easy. By having this base, the way is open from Molot to choose our point of attack anywhere in the Southern Ocean – the Drake Passage, the Cape oil route, the Malvinas, anywhere we wish. The Malvinas is the initial operation to be mounted from Molot. The first anyone will be aware of it will be when the attack squadron with Group Condor appears in The Narrows.'

I knew now that the submarine I had seen from Albatros had been no hallucination. Grohman's words told me what it had been busy doing – refuelling with jellified fuel. The secret was so momentous that the Orion had had to pay with its life merely because of its presence near Molot. Brockton had been in deeper waters than he had suspected.

Molot was safe from detection by virtue of its remoteness and the wildest seas and weather on the face of the oceans. No ship-master in his senses would risk approaching that protecting screen of icebergs, even if by some off-chance he should be so distant from all recognized sea routes. Most valuable of all to the Red Fleet was that canopy of foggy vapour. It effectively created an impenetrable screen to spy satellite surveillance. Molot was the dagger aimed at the heart of the West.

Chapter 26

The blade of that dagger lay unsheathed when Jetwind rounded Trolltunga's ice head-land as high and impressive as Cape Horn itself. It was a Soviet naval squadron. It was a gut-roiling exhibition of the iron fist.